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The old Wall Street adage that "bulls and bears make money but pigs get slaughtered" certainly applies to doctors who abuse the medicare system. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central DIstrict of California issued a press release (here) discussing the 51 month sentence given to Mark Little, a podiatrist in Orange County, who was convicted for submitting over $800,000 of fraudulent bills for procedures that were never performed on patients. According to the press release:

The evidence presented at trial showed that Little used the names and Medicare beneficiary numbers belonging to a few of his elderly patients to create and submit bogus claims for services that were never performed. Specifically, Little submitted claims for daily or almost-daily surgical procedures and casting on these same patients for months, sometimes years, at a time.

The investigation into Little began when a Medicare beneficiary reviewed her Medicare statement and noticed that Little had billed Medicare for more than 70 procedures he had never performed. That beneficiary called Medicare's hotline number to complain. In its investigation, Medicare noticed the same type of daily or almost-daily billing for Little's top-ten highest billed patients. When these patients were interviewed, they stated that they only saw Little once every two weeks or once a month, and then they only received toenail clippings.

Among podiatrists in Orange County, Little submitted the largest amount of claims to Medicare, even though he had far fewer patients then the next highest-billing podiatrists. In fact, Little's ten highest-billed patients generated approximately $800,000 in Medicare claims and accounted for 90 percent of his total Medicare income.